Quote from: DannyHamilton on March 10, 2013, 04:33:48 PM

Quote from: yourstruly on March 10, 2013, 09:48:17 AM

All of this got me thinking, wouldn't it be crazy if after all the bitcoins were handed out the infrastructure once used to mine was turned to hack wallets because of their value.

Sure, but first you'd have to get ahold of the wallet.dat file somehow. Then, even if you could do that, keep in mind that miners get the transaction fees of all the transactions in the block in addition to the newly minted bitcoins. So in 136 years when all new bitcoins have been issued, you'd probably still be more profitable continuing to mine (and receiving the transaction fees), unless you could get ahold of the wallet.dat of someone who had a REALLY large number of bitcoins AND an insecure password.

I had not realized that the mining would continue because of ongoing transactions which makes sense now that you say it. Thanks for that insight.